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Canada's national weekly current affairs magazineMon, 03 Aug 2015 00:25:17 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.2Video: Three Power List honorees muse on the meaning of powerhttp://www.macleans.ca/multimedia/video/video-three-power-list-honorees-muse-on-the-meaning-of-power/
http://www.macleans.ca/multimedia/video/video-three-power-list-honorees-muse-on-the-meaning-of-power/#commentsWed, 19 Nov 2014 19:41:36 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=641619Three of the Canadians unveiled in the first reveal of our 2014 Power List tell us what power means to them

Michael Cooke, Ann Cavoukian and Stephen Scherer all made it into our initial unveil of the 2014 Maclean’s Power List, which we are beginning to unveil today—checking in at 37th, 36th and 35th respectively. Here’s their thoughts on power, and what superpower they would have, if they could choose one.

35. Stephen Scherer

For many, science is seen as a kind of higher, sacred sanctum of knowledge, far away from the profane world of power and politics. And yet, for Stephen Scherer—who co-founded and leads Canada’s first genome lab in Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children and whose paradigm-shifting research has him touted as an inevitable Nobel prize laureate—the lab isn’t too different from the hockey rink.

“I have a son who’s quite into hockey, so I hang around with the hockey dads, and no one’s in science. And some of them are very successful people,” said Scherer, 50. “But whenever I talk to them I say, ‘There’s nothing as competitive as science.’ ”

Scherer was a talented hockey player in his day, playing forward for championship squads in high school, but Canada is better for his career shift. He was part of the research team that, in 2004, discovered copy-number variation in DNA, detonating the long-held belief that very little of our genetic makeup could differ. That game-changer has since helped Scherer ﬁnd copy-number variations that could cause genetic diseases; just this year, he unlocked a potential “autism formula” that will help spur more reliable identification from an earlier age, when intervention is most effective. In September, he earned a spot among only four Canadians on this year’s Thomson Reuters citation laureates list, which has correctly predicted 35 Nobel winners in the last 12 years. “If I accomplish nothing else in my life, being on that list is unbelievable,” he says.

Of course, Scherer’s drive precludes that possibility, fuelled by a field where academic peers double as competitors for research-grant dollars. Despite the honours and his prolific output—he’s published more than 400 papers and been cited in more than 30,000—he still puts in 100-hour weeks, reminding himself of the value of his work every time he walks through the doors at the hospital. “You really can’t rest on your laurels. In a way, I kind of like that,” he says. “It’s sort of a sick thing to say, but it never ends in your life.”
And while turning 50 would consign most athletes to retirement, it’s clear Scherer isn’t ready for the emeritus status that comes with science’s highest honour. “Nobel prize-winners will all tell you that once you win, your life changes: you become a public figure, you give talks. So ideally for me, I’d actually win it 10 years out, because of my age.”

To get there? Well, it’s just like in hockey, he says with a laugh: “The key thing is to stay healthy.” —Adrian Lee

#36. Ann Cavoukian

Long before her high-profile 15-year tenure as Ontario’s information and privacy commissioner came to an end earlier this year, Ann Cavoukian had solidified her reputation as an international expert on Internet-era intrusions into our private lives. Her Privacy By Design framework, with its seven foundational principles, such as embedding privacy into the design of IT systems, was recognized in 2010 as the global privacy standard. It has since been translated into 37 languages.

A workaholic by nature, Cavoukian opted not to take a break after her three terms as Ontario privacy commissioner, but instead took on a new role at Ryerson University as executive director of the Institute for Privacy and Big Data. With the public’s ongoing concerns about online security and identity theft, Cavoukian’s next chapter will be to demonstrate that acquisition and analysis of mass data sets can coexist with personal privacy. After all, she’s already created the framework. — Aaron Hutchins

#37. Michael Cooke

In the five years since he was hired as editor of the Toronto Star, Michael Cooke has overhauled the once-plodding daily and turned it into a relentless powerhouse that sets the bar for investigative reporting in Canada. From dirty doctors to Rob Ford’s crack smoking to Jian Ghomeshi’s alleged sex assaults, Cooke’s mission to blow the lid off corruption and deception has the country taking note. His newspaper wins prestigious journalism awards—this year, the Micheners—but more important, it pushes the national agenda on issues of public policy and abuse of power. Born and raised in a small village in Lancashire, England, he took on the local fox hunt in his first gig as 17-year-old cub reporter, setting the tone for the rest of his career. After immigrating to Canada in 1974, he had stints at papers across the country before moving south of the border to the Chicago Sun-Times and New York Daily News. His investigative team is the envy of Canadian journalists, and word is he’s looking to expand its reach to Ottawa. Parliament Hill, you’ve been warned. — Rachel Browne

This year’s Power List—the second annual compilation by Maclean’s writers and editors of this unapologetically subjective ranking—highlights the clout of a truly diverse selection of 50 influential Canadians. Our list ranges from household names to: who’s that? Pinnacle corporate predators rub shoulders here with non-profit paragons. To help you understand how we picked them, you’ll see, beside each name, three icons. We’ll be unveiling more and more of our list every day until Canada’s 15 most powerful people are revealed on Friday.

In the meantime: Are you annoyed by our choices? Angered by our omissions? We invite you to write in our comments and offer your own powerful case for a different list.

This symbol indicates our weighting of the individual’s institutional standing. No surprise that the newly named head of Canada’s biggest bank ranks the maximum five. On the other hand, while we detect serious power in the creative clout of a certain movie director, he doesn’t head a studio or produce his own films, so we award him only a single blue pillar icon.

This tells you how much timing mattered in our choice of a given individual, based on the way things look to us in late 2014. Power expresses itself, after all, through the tasks of the moment. You won’t have to read very far into our list to see that we recognize the pressing priority of the Ebola challenge: Five clocks to a doctor near the centre of the crisis. The same principle works in reverse: Names from sports that made our 2013 list because we were looking ahead to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia have fallen off entirely.

The power that flows from great ideas is perhaps the most appealing kind. So we enjoy awarding multiple light bulbs to, as you’ll see, a university resident with new notions about linking academia to the community, or a young doc with new ways of thinking about the health of old folks.

#50: Christine JenningsMystery export

A former town planner, Christina Jennings started the Toronto-based production company Shaftesbury in 1987, which creates and distributes original programming. But her biggest success has come recently with Murdoch Mysteries, a detective series set in Toronto at the turn of the 20th century. Originally aired on City TV and now on the CBC, it broadcast its 100th episode this year, and has been aggressively sold to international markets: “It’s amazing to create a Canadian show that’s a hit in prime time; that’s a hit in France, dubbed; that’s a hit in England,” Jennings says. It helps that the show fills a broadcasting niche as the kind of non-serialized crime drama most U.S. networks don’t make anymore: “You can miss a few episodes and it doesn’t matter,” Jennings explains. “You can have season 2 back-to-back with season 8 and it doesn’t make a difference.” — Jaime J. Weinman

#49. Yannick Nezet-SeguinAnd then he lifts the baton

The tiny, perfect, Montreal-born music director of his hometown’s Orchestre Métropolitain turns 40 in the spring. He still looks younger than that—until he lifts a baton and orchestras thunder in response. In his third season as music director of the mighty Philadelphia Orchestra, he’s turning around its financial fortunes and revitalizing its artistic mission. He records whatever he wants—and that’s a lot—for Deutsche Grammophon, Europe’s greatest record label. He showed political clout back home when he complained about the new Quebec government’s plans to close small-town music conservatories; Philippe Couillard abandoned the plan within days. What’s next? The legendary Berlin Philharmonic will name a new music director in May. “Yannick,” as he’s known, is on everyone’s lips as a top candidate. — Paul Wells

#48. Jeremy CharlesFoodie for thought

It is his penchant for collecting local Newfoundland ingredients and turning them into a fine dining experience that has transformed Jeremy Charles into one of Canada’s most celebrated chefs. A meal from the 37-year-old head chef at Raymonds restaurant in St. John’s might feature anything from moose ravioli to cod sounds (the fish’s bladder) to Acadian sturgeon caviar. Haute cuisine doesn’t have a low price tag. The seven-course tasting menu costs $125, before factoring in any wine.

Charles left the East Coast at 19 and spent the next decade mastering his skills at culinary schools in Chicago and Montreal. Not long after his return home, Charles opened Raymonds in 2011, which enRoute magazine ranked at No.1 for “best new restaurant” in the country; several consider it simply one of Canada’s best restaurants of any vintage Charles has created a devoted following of foodies and fellow chefs alike, who are all lured to taste what Newfoundland and Labrador has to offer. — Aaron HutchinsBack to top

#47. Samir SinhaElder doctor

At the ripe age of 37, Dr. Samir Sinha is emerging as Canada’s most compelling voice for the elderly. In 2012, as the lead author of Ontario’s seniors strategy report, Sinha called for improving health care for older Canadians—and keeping them as physically active as possible—at a time when our ballooning aging population makes this a critical social issue. In 25 years, one-quarter of Canadians will be older than 65. And older adults currently account for 60 per cent of hospital bed days, while making up only 15 per cent of the population. “We have a health care system that was designed to meet the needs of younger Canadians, and now it needs to rapidly adapt to meeting the population it’s serving most,” Sinha says.

As director of geriatrics at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital since 2010—after his return from stints at Johns Hopkins and Oxford University where, as a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his master’s in medical history and a Ph.D. in sociology—Sinha has proven his approach works. His patients spend far less time in hospital than the provincial average and are more likely to live longer, independently at home. This includes Mr. W, now 104, who came under Sinha’s care in 2010 when he was admitted for pneumonia. Sinha ensured Mr. W stayed active and did physiotherapy. He returned home, where he’s been ever since. Many more Canadians may soon benefit from his approach: Sinha is working with the Canadian Medical Association on a national seniors strategy. — Rachel Browne

#46. Shawn AtleoPragmatist, incrementalist, motorcyclist

In January, 2013, moments before entering a crucial meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Shawn Atleo, chief of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), received a text message from Theresa Spence: “Since you have decided to betray me,” wrote the hunger-striking Attawapiskat chief, “all I ask of you now is to help carry my cold, dead body off this island.” To Atleo, the missive landed like a body blow.

Last May, after months of ceaseless, rearguard action from his political rivals, Atleo resigned partway through his term, becoming the first-ever AFN chief to do so. He’d had enough of Ottawa, he declared. He headed home to B.C., then travelled to the U.S. solo, by motorcycle.

The AFN’s loss was B.C.’s gain. Last month, B.C. Premier Christy Clark tapped the 47-year-old father of two to head a crucial new round of talks between First Nations, industry and government, raising an intriguing question: Can a leader’s power actually rise after he’s been dumped from office?

The job, more promising and powerful than anything the fractious AFN is attempting, seems tailor-made for the enterprising B.C. chief. Atleo, who got his business start by launching a coffee shop in east Vancouver, has long spearheaded First Nations collaboration with industry. (B.C. First Nations are involved in mining and energy projects worth $300 billion.) As he once told the Toronto Board of Trade: “We’re looking for partners. We’re open for business.” He was unlike anything the AFN had ever seen.

Atleo, a hereditary chief of the Ahousaht on western Vancouver Island, was schooled in the pragmatic, incrementalist approach favoured by B.C. Native leaders, who tend to negotiate for their rights. The method puts them at odds with the Prairie leadership, who tend to fight for theirs. “It is our time as indigenous peoples,” says Atleo. “We must smash the status quo.” — Nancy Macdonald

#45. Arthur FogelLive and in concert

As an organizer of music tours for everyone from the Rolling Stones to Lady Gaga, this former drummer has been a force in the music business since the 1980s. But when rock stars made most of their money from record sales, Arthur Fogel’s focus on live entertainment was, as he put it to the Independent newspaper, “at the bottom of the food chain.” Now recorded music has flatlined, and touring has become more important, turning the 60-year-old Fogel, head of global touring for Live Nation, into a celebrity. A documentary film featured Bono calling him “the most important person in live music,” and his hometown paper, the Ottawa Citizen, called 2014 his “year of living famously.” Of course, that attention also brings more negative rumours; when Lady Gaga’s 2014 tour was reported to have lost $30 million, Fogel responded that “just a complete fool would say something like that.” Fame comes at a price. — Jaime J. Weinman

44. Peter SingerGlobal health innovator

For the last 25 years, Peter Singer has dedicated his life to the impossible: solving the world’s health and social problems. His 56-page resumé proves this. He’s a medical doctor and professor, and holds numerous titles—from director of the Sandra Rotman Centre to foreign secretary to the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences—and even more accolades, including the Order of Canada and an appointment with the Royal Society of Canada. But it’s Singer’s role as CEO of Grand Challenges Canada where he’s had the most impact and turned Canada into a leader in development and global health.

Launched just over four years ago with funding from the federal government, Grand Challenges Canada finds and funds bold new ideas from innovators around the world to solve health problems in poor countries, from anemia to contaminated water. Under Singer, it has provided $158 million (and an additional $224 million leveraged from outside investors) to develop nearly 700 innovations in more than 80 low- to middle-income countries. But Singer is quick to deflect attention away from himself. “There’s a lot of credit to go around to everyone who makes all of this possible,” he says. “We have a fantastic team and it’s the innovators who are making the difference in peoples’ lives.”

At the Prime Minister’s global summit on maternal, newborn and child health last spring in Toronto, several innovations were debuted, including a project out of the University of British Columbia: a mobile phone app that measures blood oxygen levels to see if a pregnant woman is at risk for pre-eclampsia, one of the deadliest pregnancy complications in developing countries.

“We need innovations like these, because without them, we’ll just be stuck in the present, and that’s just unacceptable,” says Singer. Another Grand Challenges innovation in the works this year is a rapid diagnostic test for Ebola, being developed by an innovator from Uganda.

“It has been an incredible honour to do this on behalf of Canada,” Singer says. “It’s an initiative of which we can all be proud.” — Rachel Browne

43. Elyse AllanEnergy emissary

Alberta’s oil sands are both an economic boon and public relations disaster for Canada—a key resource that unfortunately also leaves a relatively large carbon footprint. But rather than engage in endless debates about the merits of squeezing gooey bitumen from the ground, General Electric and GE Canada CEO Elyse Allan are doing what they can to square the circle. Earlier this year, GE launched a program to fund research aimed at reducing emissions of oil sands companies and improving their energy efficiency, with Allan saying that “collaboration is key to solving big challenges.” When she’s not trying to solve one of the country’s thorniest economic problems, all while running the Canadian arm of one of the world’s biggest companies, Allan devotes hours to sitting on government advisory boards, as well as those of the C.D. Howe Institute, Conference Board of Canada and Royal Ontario Museum. — Chris Sorensen

42. John RuffoloAlways up for a venture

If oil prices keep falling, Canada will quickly realize the danger of relying on resources for growth. It’s a good thing, then, we have John Ruffolo, head of OMERS Ventures, the $200-million venture capital arm of the Ontario municipal workers’ pension fund, planting the seeds for Canada’s next generation of tech giants. Ruffolo, 48, was no stranger to the start-up sector when he took on the venture fund in 2011. At the consulting ﬁrm Deloitte in Toronto he worked closely with early-stage investors to connect them with tech entrepreneurs. His talents and influence are needed more than ever. Tech firms account for just three per cent of the market capitalization of the Toronto Stock Exchange (compared to 25 per cent for energy and mining). So far Ruffolo has nurtured a crop of start-ups, including Hootsuite, Shopify and Vision Critical, that are on track to go public, bringing much needed diversity to Canada’s capital market and helping to revive the country’s entrepreneurial spirit. — Jason Kirby

41. Jean-Pierre BlaisMore than just cute kittens

As chairman of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, Jean-Pierre Blais is the most-watched federal regulator. The Conservative government wants consumers to see more price-cutting competition for cellphone services and more choice in how they pay for cable TV channels. Blais is supposed to make it happen. It’s routinely said the CRTC oversight spans a $100-billion business undergoing a revolution. But Blais sets himself up as a voice of caution. In the era of Netflix, Shomi and HBO online, he points out that about 60 per cent of Canadians don’t stream TV shows on their computers. “Canadians still watch on average 28 hours of traditional TV a week,” Blais said recently. “And the hours of viewing [spent on] online video services, including cute kittens on YouTube, is only 1.9 hours per week.” Still, when it comes to crafting new rules for service, and new safeguards for Canadian content, Blais is the man in the hot seat. — John Geddes

#40. DrakeFrom crown prince to kingmaker

If we’re to judge Aubrey Drake Graham by the metric Canadians too often use to assess our homegrown talents—how famous are they in the U.S.?—there’s no denying the 28-year-old’s power, with his claim to the crown of the American-born rap game. He’s bankable in a fraught music industry, besting the Beatles in Billboard-charting singles in just five years. As the Toronto Raptors’ global ambassador, his brand has become infused with a franchise in well-timed ascendance. And he’s doing it in an essentially Canadian way—he owns the vulnerable image he’s curated, turning jokes about lint-rolling his pants at a basketball game and his average athletic prowess into marketing campaigns and self-deprecating Instagram posts. But perhaps the truest tell of his influence is that he’d rather be a hip-hop kingmaker than a mere crown prince: his label OVO Sound is cranking out acolytes in his hazy R&B-rap image, from PartyNextDoor to iLoveMakonnen. “How the game turn into the Drake show?” he rapped on the triumphal throwaway track Draft Day. How indeed. — Adrian Lee

#39. Arvind GuptaThin on experience, rich in conviction

It’s not the fact that Arvind Gupta is a computer scientist that makes him such an unusual choice to oversee the University of British Columbia and its $1.4-billion budget. It is that UBC’s new hire has zero administrative experience in academia, a far cry from the usual path from professor to dean to vice-president to president.

What Gupta does have is a belief that exceptional research of all kinds has a place at UBC. This is blasphemy for those who believe university is a place to learn for learning’s sake, and that research should be “pure” and divorced from commercial interests. Gupta isn’t afraid of stirring the pot. He argues that collaborating with industry is UBC’s way forward—and makes his case for partnerships with the private sector rather bluntly, at least by the polite standards of power struggles in academia. Gupta is also an innovation expert who, as CEO of Mitacs, overhauled the non-profit research-funding organization to make it a place where Canada’s top graduate students are paired with industry to solve real business problems. He’s already announced he will add $100 million to UBC’s $565-million research budget. Now it’s up to Gupta to prove his hypothesis that this multi-million-dollar investment will distinguish UBC graduates and make their diplomas worth more than others. “What we’re doing now,” he says, “is not good enough.” — Nancy Macdonald

38. George StroumboulopoulosA vegan’s power play

He’s gone from being Canada’s boyfriend to the nation’s emcee. As the face of Rogers’ new 12-year, $5.2-billion investment in the NHL, “Strombo”—his nickname—has been handed perhaps the most culturally significant perch in the country. Each weekend, the 42-year-old vegan now guides the collective consciousness as the host of Hockey Night in Canada—a 62-year Saturday tradition—and as the main studio anchor for Sunday’s Hometown Hockey. With a resumé that includes stints in alternative radio and as a Much Music VJ, a 10-year run as the host of his own CBC television talk show and a couple of unsuccessful attempts to break into the U.S. market, Stroumboulopoulos was not an obvious choice. But early in his tenure, he already seems at ease, infusing the broadcasts with his hipster tastes and a genuine passion for the game. “No one out there can out sports-fan me,” he told Maclean’s shortly after he was hired. How much pull does this skinny-jeans aficionado now enjoy? His feature guest on the season opening broadcast was none other than Stephen Harper. The prime minister, another dark-horse hockey dweeb, took him on a tour of his “jersey room” (actually a closet) at 24 Sussex and showed off his prized possession, a Leafs sweater autographed by all the surviving members of the 1967 Cup-winning team. Interesting TV, with some bonus high-powered trolling: Strombo, a noted Habs partisan, bleeds blue, blanc et rouge. — Jonathon Gatehouse

#37. Michael CookeMan on a mission

In the five years since he was hired as editor of the Toronto Star, Michael Cooke has overhauled the once-plodding daily and turned it into a relentless powerhouse that sets the bar for investigative reporting in Canada. From dirty doctors to Rob Ford’s crack smoking to Jian Ghomeshi’s alleged sex assaults, Cooke’s mission to blow the lid off corruption and deception has the country taking note. His newspaper wins prestigious journalism awards—this year, the Micheners—but more important, it pushes the national agenda on issues of public policy and abuse of power. Born and raised in a small village in Lancashire, England, he took on the local fox hunt in his first gig as 17-year-old cub reporter, setting the tone for the rest of his career. After immigrating to Canada in 1974, he had stints at papers across the country before moving south of the border to the Chicago Sun-Times and New York Daily News. His investigative team is the envy of Canadian journalists, and word is he’s looking to expand its reach to Ottawa. Parliament Hill, you’ve been warned. — Rachel Browne

#36. Ann CavoukianPrivacy in 37 languages

Long before her high-profile 15-year tenure as Ontario’s information and privacy commissioner came to an end earlier this year, Ann Cavoukian had solidified her reputation as an international expert on Internet-era intrusions into our private lives. Her Privacy By Design framework, with its seven foundational principles, such as embedding privacy into the design of IT systems, was recognized in 2010 as the global privacy standard. It has since been translated into 37 languages.

A workaholic by nature, Cavoukian opted not to take a break after her three terms as Ontario privacy commissioner, but instead took on a new role at Ryerson University as executive director of the Institute for Privacy and Big Data. With the public’s ongoing concerns about online security and identity theft, Cavoukian’s next chapter will be to demonstrate that acquisition and analysis of mass data sets can coexist with personal privacy. After all, she’s already created the framework. — Aaron Hutchins

35. Stephen SchererScience as hockey

For many, science is seen as a kind of higher, sacred sanctum of knowledge, far away from the profane world of power and politics. And yet, for Stephen Scherer—who co-founded and leads Canada’s first genome lab in Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children and whose paradigm-shifting research has him touted as an inevitable Nobel prize laureate—the lab isn’t too different from the hockey rink.

“I have a son who’s quite into hockey, so I hang around with the hockey dads, and no one’s in science. And some of them are very successful people,” said Scherer, 50. “But whenever I talk to them I say, ‘There’s nothing as competitive as science.’ ”

Scherer was a talented hockey player in his day, playing forward for championship squads in high school, but Canada is better for his career shift. He was part of the research team that, in 2004, discovered copy-number variation in DNA, detonating the long-held belief that very little of our genetic makeup could differ. That game-changer has since helped Scherer ﬁnd copy-number variations that could cause genetic diseases; just this year, he unlocked a potential “autism formula” that will help spur more reliable identification from an earlier age, when intervention is most effective. In September, he earned a spot among only four Canadians on this year’s Thomson Reuters citation laureates list, which has correctly predicted 35 Nobel winners in the last 12 years. “If I accomplish nothing else in my life, being on that list is unbelievable,” he says.

Of course, Scherer’s drive precludes that possibility, fuelled by a field where academic peers double as competitors for research-grant dollars. Despite the honours and his prolific output—he’s published more than 400 papers and been cited in more than 30,000—he still puts in 100-hour weeks, reminding himself of the value of his work every time he walks through the doors at the hospital. “You really can’t rest on your laurels. In a way, I kind of like that,” he says. “It’s sort of a sick thing to say, but it never ends in your life.”
And while turning 50 would consign most athletes to retirement, it’s clear Scherer isn’t ready for the emeritus status that comes with science’s highest honour. “Nobel prize-winners will all tell you that once you win, your life changes: you become a public figure, you give talks. So ideally for me, I’d actually win it 10 years out, because of my age.”

To get there? Well, it’s just like in hockey, he says with a laugh: “The key thing is to stay healthy.” —Adrian Lee

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/the-macleans-2014-power-list-part-1/feed/0The restaurants that matter to politicianshttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/the-restaurants-that-matter/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/the-restaurants-that-matter/#commentsThu, 29 Nov 2012 11:50:01 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=317436From the Maclean's Power Issue: The booths and tables where the deals get done

In spite of its über-Canadian location at the corner of Rideau and Sussex, Métropolitain Brasserie’s management went for a belle époque brasserie brand, its tag line: “You’re closer to Paris than you think.” But the Met became a go-to place from the get-go for Hill dwellers and their hangers-on. A giant room seating 250 inside and a number more out, open every day till late, this brasserie has been at their service since 2006. In its first year, former prime minister Paul Martin brought his sons here for some post-election succour. But since the Conservatives secured their majority, this bit of Paris on Sussex has become their play fort. John Baird and Peter MacKay lunch here regularly. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been sighted at the Met a number of times, including at CTV Ottawa’s 50th-anniversary party last year. But the main criterion during “Hill hour”—when the Malpeques go for a buck a shuck—seems to be age before affiliation. Rookie MPs and staffers decompress at the zinc-topped counters, jostle for space at the raw bar or settle in to one of the red banquettes.

If you want to pol-watch in slightly more formal surroundings, Rick Mercer has a suggestion. “If I was attempting to take over the world, I know where I’d go. Today’s movers, shakers and foodies,” says Mercer, “follow one guy—Steve Beckta.” Mercer’s talking about the owner of the decade-old Beckta Dining & Wine. From day one it commanded attention, setting a new standard for fine dining in the capital. Along with the quality of its food and wine list, Beckta, an Ottawa native, is a consummate host. And he hires better than anyone else in the city. For political stargazing, there may be no finer place. Says one Hill veteran: “At Beckta’s place, you’ll be seeing the ‘big spenders,’ like Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin and other people who can afford it.” Beckta’s private rooms are for strategy sessions. It’s believed that Martin and his advisors made the decision to call for the Gomery inquiry in Beckta’s backroom. Former prime minister Jean Chrétien is a semi-regular. So is Jim Flaherty. The current PM, one Conservative staffer reports, had a birthday dinner here. For other evidence of the high-profile clientele, just read the signatures on the “wall of wine” behind the bar. On a bottle of châteauneuf-du-pape is the late Jack Layton’s John Hancock. “It’s the finest bottle on the wall,” our server tells us. The best gastronomic strategy at Beckta Dining & Wine is to head straight for chef Katie Brown’s tasting menu. And give in to sommelier Beckta’s wine pairings.

Beckta is also the mastermind behind Play Food & Wine, which occupies two storeys of a heritage building in the ByWard Market, near the U.S. Embassy. The tapas-esque format suits the agenda of Hill-ites as they try to hit multiple functions in one night. Pleasurable small plates also makes Play a go-to for press gallery dinner parties. When one of the Prime Minister’s senior staff, Patrick Muttart, made his farewell, he did it at Play. Cabinet minister Ted Menzies was thrown a surprise 60th here. They’d have eaten well: on executive chef Michael Moffatt’s rotating menu, about the only constant is the tamari-darkened hanger steak with its grilled mushroom mates and perfect frites. Plates are paired with a wine match in three-ounce and five-ounce pours. There is admirable charcuterie at Play, an all-Québécois cheese list and desserts worthy of serious attention.

A short walk from the offices of the PMO is Le Café, the National Arts Centre dining room. “You can’t swing a dead cat on the patio without hitting a lobbyist, staffer or senior public servant,” says one insider. Michael Blackie, who took over as executive chef of the NAC nearly four years ago—and recently left—had some patrons scratching their heads over his outré food. (“Can I get fries with the ‘beef tartare on a tempura shiso jasmine rice bomb with ume plum paint?’ ”)

The fittingly named Social Restaurant + Lounge, cool, stylish and with solid bones, tends to draw younger politicos. When it opened in the Chrétien days, it was a magnet for Liberal “power diners.” For ex-politico Belinda Stronach, it was a quick dash across the street from her snappy Sussex Street condo. Today, the power still comes to Social, it’s just not very Liberal. Social’s handsome assets include its century-old stone walls, tall front windows with fine views, clever lighting and a bustling courtyard patio scene. Many head for the $28 burger (with a foie gras toupée).

Memories are strong at Hy’s Steakhouse. Says one prolific Hill blogger, “Except for budget nights and other big occasions, Hy’s has become a bit of a museum of power brokers past.” Nowadays it’s morphed into a haunt of hockey players and elder statesmen looking for a no-frills protein fix and the attention of servers who have been working its plush room for 30 years. Shortly after the Harperites secured their majority, retired senator Gerry St. Germain, in his trademark stetson, was holding court at the table by the glassed-in grill. Two tables away, less in the spotlight, Liberals Ralph Goodale and Dominic LeBlanc were seen sharing a meal and some quiet conversation, interrupted every few minutes by a visitor extending an admiring hand or a word of encouragement. And at the cocktail bar, one source reports, the bartender is well acquainted with Baird’s favourite white wine.

Incidentally, Ottawa isn’t all meat-and-potatoes: when Rona Ambrose has had enough of rubber chicken, she heads to ZenKitchenfor chef Caroline Ishii’s award-winning vegan cuisine. Elizabeth May turns to the city’s oldest vegetarian restaurant, the Green Door, for its live-forever buffet.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/the-restaurants-that-matter/feed/2From the Maclean’s issue on Ottawa’s powerful, five people who are no longerhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/out-of-favour/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/out-of-favour/#commentsWed, 28 Nov 2012 09:20:01 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=317430Power is fleeting. As Paul Wells reports, for some, it's already fled

]]>Watch later this morning for the Maclean’s Power List. In the meantime, here are five who did not make the list:

Sean Kilpatrick/CP; CP; Reuters

1. Cheryl Gallant: Conservative MP for Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke. Once tweeted, “No carbon tax please, Igafi!” A reference to the leaders of the Liberal party and Libya. Deleted the tweet later. Doesn’t talk much in public these days.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/out-of-favour/feed/12The @ pack of Parliament Hillhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/the-pack/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/the-pack/#commentsTue, 27 Nov 2012 12:00:01 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=317438Thumbs at the ready, this gang of MPs have tapped the awesome power of Twitter—140 characters at a time

1. Justin Trudeau, @JustinTrudeau: The young Trudeau was a popular online entity even before he announced his leadership candidacy. You could say it’s integrated into his routine. So, it was no surprise that his online properties were just as much a part of his announcement as the party in his home riding in Montreal. Expect digital to play an important role in his effort to build Liberal energy.

Read more about Justin Trudeau later today when The Maclean’s Power List goes online.

2. Tony Clement, @TonyclementCPC He made a name for himself on Twitter early on. His style and tone, sharing both updates on official duties and reflections on his life, earned him a bipartisan reputation as a relatable politician. His approach has allowed him to make mistakes and be (generally) forgiven by his online community. Expect dry humour.

3. Carolyn Bennett, @Carolyn_Bennett She’s among the most active MPs on Twitter. Combined with regular Facebook town halls, she’s built a strong following. Bennett is above average in her number of retweets, making her an effective amplifier of ideas and news she feels her community should know.

4. Elizabeth May, @ElizabethMay Largely shut out of debates in Parliament, the Green party leader makes up for it with Twitter, using it to oppose the omnibus budget. She has the most engaged Twitter community of any MP, and her 2,086 replies to tweets last summer led all MPs.

5. Jason Kenney, @kenneyjasonHe can be extraordinarily partisan on Twitter, but occasionally dials it back. He recently shared a photograph of his grandfather—one of the more relatable moments in his Twitter stream. Don’t expect much engagement. He views it as a broadcast channel.

6. Paul Dewar, @PaulDewar Though he doesn’t tweet as often as others, Dewar offers a balance of partisan tweets and those announcing events and activities. He’ll need to do even more in his capacity as a reliable member of the NDP front bench to help his party strengthen relations with Canadians.

7. Olivia Chow, @oliviachow It’s easy to say her online profile was elevated because of Jack. That would discredit her own efforts to efficiently build her online personality. The question is, will Toronto municipal politics lure her away from Parliament? Watch Twitter for the answer.

8. Marc Garneau, @MarcGarneauAt one time, the Liberals’ industry critic was little engaged in digital culture. That’s changed. Garneau is among the more active and engaged tweeting MPs—two-thirds of his tweets are replies. If he joins the leadership race, Twitter will be central to his campaign.

9. James Moore, @JamesMoore_org Another early adopter, Moore is a lover of gadgets that let him stay connected. His tweets range from biting partisanship to recently bidding farewell to his dog Oakley, thanking him for a lifetime of companionship. He tweets and retweets a lot, but rarely replies.

10. Denis Coderre, @DenisCoderreSimply put, he’s a tweeting machine—an active tweeter and retweeter who also replies to tweets. A lot. His live-tweeting of Montreal Canadiens hockey games is legendary. Rumour is Coderre may leave Ottawa to run for mayor of Montreal. Expect to learn about it on Twitter first.

]]>Ask around about the attributes of influence in the federal government during Stephen Harper’s rule. The answers will vary widely depending on who’s doing the talking, but certain elements will pop up with intriguing regularity. Just about everyone, for instance, agrees that power these days tilts westward. And, sure enough, the top three on our list—the Prime Minister himself, inevitably, followed by the chief justice of the Supreme Court and the governor of the Bank of Canada—all hail from Alberta.

Yet Harper had little to do with the rise of Beverley McLachlin and Mark Carney. So is this top-of-the-list cluster of Albertans mere happenstance, or a true sign of a pattern of power? One thing it isn’t, we promise, is a contrivance. Maclean’s writers and editors compiled this admittedly subjective list based on our own combined experience covering Ottawa’s most important people, tested against the sage insights of political strategists, veterans of the public service and lobbyists who make it their business to size up the city’s elite.

What makes one partisan or public servant, public figure or private power broker seem to matter more than another can be mysterious. In some cases, managerial style lifted a figure into our sights, like McLachlin’s subtle touch with the nine egos on the top court, or the way top bureaucrat Wayne Wouters boosts the morale of a public service whose pinnacle he commands. Often power flows in well-worn channels, as through the offices of the finance or foreign minister. Sometimes, though, someone cracks the institutional edifice, and influence streams in unexpectedly. Look at what Kevin Page has done as the first parliamentary budget officer.

Sometimes what matters, at least to us, hardly registers on the traditional scales of influence and power. So we unapologetically assign serious significance to the ability to kick up a fuss in question period or assemble an army of Twitter followers. We believe an ambassador can, if only occasionally, amount to more than the individual whose hand is holding that champagne flute. We insist that an obstreperous backbencher can sometimes matter more than an inconspicuous cabinet minister.

There is no algorithm for tallying up who is important in Ottawa. Yet there’s only one place to begin calculating: from the conviction that the answers, however open to debate, matter greatly. And on that democratic note, welcome to the Power List.

01: Stephen HarperThe decider

Seven years after Jean Chrétien was elected, he called a snap election to keep his finance minister, Paul Martin, from quitting and taking half the Liberal party with him. Seven years after Brian Mulroney was elected, his party was bleeding from both ends to two upstart rivals, Reform and the Bloc Québécois. Stephen Harper will reach the seventh anniversary of his election in January, and there is still only him.

The only cabinet ministers he has permitted to rise are the ones whose loyalty is beyond question: John Baird, Jason Kenney, James Moore. Harper makes all the important decisions. Do foreign takeovers of Canadian businesses get approved? Do trade deals go ahead? Will there be attack ads this week? If there is a decision he doesn’t make, that means it was not an important decision.

Harper’s party is united, his voter base solid, his majority immune to assault from the opposition benches. When Mitt Romney lost the U.S. presidential election, just about every pundit in Canada coughed up a column suggesting the Republicans look north for inspiration and course correction.

Harper has become an elder statesman, elected for the first time only two months after Angela Merkel became chancellor of Germany. A decade after he built the Conservative Party of Canada, he is still the one who defines its mission, its priorities, its tone.

And yet this year he has more often demonstrated the limits of his power than the extent of it.

A year ago, the Prime Minister gave up on Barack Obama when the U.S. President delayed approval of the Keystone XL pipeline. But the American electorate declined to follow suit, and now Keystone’s future is back in Obama’s hands. Harper implemented a resource-export pivot to Asia. But public opinion didn’t pivot with him.

And now Harper, who went into politics to fight the Trudeau legacy, must face the prospect of a 2013 during which (at least after the Liberals finally select a leader in April) he could be facing Justin Trudeau every day in the Commons.

By the time he got to New Delhi at the beginning of the month, Harper was beginning to sound a bit like King Canute in reverse, standing at the shore beseeching a new tide of prosperity to come in. “The world’s economy is moving quickly; Canada and India must also,” he told a World Economic Forum event, urging India to act with uncharacteristic swiftness to conclude a trade deal. “Time and tide wait for no one. We must redouble our efforts. Let us not lose the chance for both of our countries that this moment offers.”

Oh well. He still has that majority in Parliament, which means he still has his budget implementation acts, twice a year at hundreds of pages of changes to the way Canada is governed. Each bill cuts spending, curbs the power of the federal government and limits the ability of any future government to return to an activist agenda. Other leaders build monuments. Harper is working to make monuments harder for any of his successors to build. And he still has the luxury he always wanted on his side: time.

02: Beverley McLachlinThe consensus builder

When she was celebrating 10 years as chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada back in 2009, Beverley McLachlin made an optimistic declaration. The rancorous debate over what’s called “judicial activism,” McLachlin told the Canadian Bar Association, was over. Bitter complaining about unelected judges imposing their will on elected governments, she said, had given way to “recognition that, in a mature democracy of rights, both institutions are vital.”

Two years later she was back in front of the CBA, this time thanking the president of the lawyers’ group for sticking up for an independent judiciary after Immigration Minister Jason Kenney accused judges of undermining the system for assessing refugee claims.

The persistence of tension between courts and politicians is a reminder of McLachlin’s power as the country’s top judge. But in her long run as chief justice, she’s made herself a hard target for politicians, especially on the right, who tend to view judges with suspicion. McLachlin can’t be easily pigeonholed ideologically, and under her leadership, the Supreme Court doesn’t neatly divide along ideological lines.

In fact, its two most politically sensitive recent decisions—first blocking the Harper government from shutting down Vancouver’s supervised injection site for drug addicts, then stopping Finance Minister Jim Flaherty from setting up a national stock market regulator over provincial objections—were unanimous. Accusing the court of a left-leaning bias is tricky when even its Conservative-appointed judges sign on to rulings that thwart Tory aims.

How does McLachlin do it? Seasoned court-watchers credit her with a low-key, consensus-building approach to the complex task of managing the nine-member bench. “She never seems in a hurry, but she gets so much done,” says Eugene Meehan, who regularly argues cases before the court as a partner in the Ottawa firm Supreme Advocacy. But Meehan adds that McLachlin’s quiet, conciliatory manner covers “a fire for the law that would burn through a pouring rain.”

In the Western-oriented Harper era in Ottawa, it doesn’t hurt that McLachlin comes from little Pincher Creek, Alta., where she was born in 1943. Her law degree is from the University of Alberta, but she built her career in Vancouver, teaching law at the University of British Columbia before being appointed a judge in 1981, at just 37. She was named to the Supreme Court of Canada in 1989 by prime minister Brian Mulroney, and was made chief justice in 2000, the first woman to hold the position, by Jean Chrétien.

University of Ottawa law professor Adam Dodek says concern for the real-world effects of judgments is one of McLachlin’s defining traits. Dodek points to her court’s carefully calibrated 2010 decision on Omar Khadr, in which it ruled the government had violated Khadr’s rights, but stopped short of ordering actions that might have looked like the judges dictating foreign policy. Making a point while avoiding an outright clash with the politicians is pure McLachlin. “There is no doubt in my mind that this is absolutely the McLachlin court,” Dodek says, “not only in name, but in style and in action.”

While her demeanour suggests an aversion to open conflict, McLachlin doesn’t dodge the tough issues. When Maclean’s asked her in 2010 about the Harper government’s policy of legislating mandatory minimum prison terms for many more crimes, she flatly rejected the underlying presumption that sentences are too often too soft. McLachlin stressed that the Criminal Code requires judges to aim to rehabilitate offenders, whereas critics tend to view sentencing “only through the lens of retribution.”

The issue of mandatory minimums ranks among the more politically charged questions likely to test her court’s ability to use its power judiciously in the next few years.

03: Mark CarneyThe coaxer

At the moment when he announced this week that he would be leaving Ottawa next June for London, the nature of Mark Carney’s singular form of power suddenly came into clearer focus. After all, his successor as governor of the Bank of Canada will, in all likelihood, continue with much the same interest rate policy as Carney. And the new top central banker will likely keep lecturing Canadians to pay down their household debt. But the next gov is almost certain to fall short of Carney’s blend of international clout and near-flawless presentation. By now, of course, everybody knows that Carney is moving on to become governor of the Bank of England. By his own assessment, he’ll be leaving a Canadian scene where the key political and public-service players were largely in accord behind a clear economic strategy for a more challenging British playing field. Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty will miss the credibility Carney brought, even to a photo-op. They might not miss the way he often outshone them. He’s signed on for a five-year hitch in London. That means he’ll only be 53 when he needs to make his next move, so Carney and Canada might have yet have a future.

04: Thomas MulcairThe thorn

The notion that the NDP leader rates a high position on this list irks Conservative strategists. They argue that opposition leaders lost any real power when Harper won his majority in 2011. But focusing on Thomas Mulcair’s inability to fell the government or vote down its legislation would be to take too narrow a view of his influence. By shoring up the NDP’s dominant position in Quebec (bequeathed to him by Jack Layton), Mulcair largely forces the Tories to look elsewhere for growth. By criticizing what he views as lax regulation of the oil sands, he compels the Conservatives to play to their Alberta base, when they might otherwise be cultivating themes that give them a better chance broadening their support beyond. His basic political competence makes the hill the Liberals are climbing that much steeper. Indeed, everywhere on the tactical playing field of federal politics, Mulcair’s presence is palpable. That’s power.

05: Nigel WrightThe conciliator

The morning papers had brought bad news—a prominent Montreal businessman delivering a scathing critique of a new government policy. And the consensus around the conference table in the Prime Minister’s Office was that the reply should be in kind: a few well-placed leaks to the media to put the spotlight on the executive’s own shortcomings to serve as a warning not to mess with Ottawa. Or at the very least, soften him up as a prelude to negotiations.

It was one of the first decisions that Nigel Wright faced when he took over as Stephen Harper’s chief of staff in January 2011. He took notes as everyone in the room had their say, asking occasional questions. Then he made a statement of principle. Regardless of how things had been done in the past, this wasn’t how the PMO was going to operate on his watch. Instead, the Harvard-educated lawyer turned Bay Street dealmaker went to call the disgruntled CEO. A half-hour later, Wright returned; the man was amenable to talking and had cleared the next two hours of his schedule to work out a deal. The crisis was over by lunchtime. “There were no political fireworks, and no one was damaged any further. The issue was just dealt with,” says one Conservative who was in the room. “That’s the way Nigel is: a success-oriented, behind-the-scenes guy who understands how to play the game, but isn’t out to win at any price.”

Harper’s government hasn’t always been inclined to play nice. Previous chiefs of staff Ian Brodie and Guy Giorno were known for their sharp elbows. But when Harper lured Wright away from a career as a managing director at buyout firm Onex Corp., it signalled a change. The 48-year-old financier has deep Tory roots and had worked in Ottawa before, as a junior aide to prime minister Brian Mulroney, but he’s a bridge-builder, not a demolition expert, the kind of guy who appeals to his boss’s wonkish, policy-driven side, rather than his fascination with the darker political arts.

“I think he’s brought stability to the PMO,” says Charley McMillan, a York University economist who served as Mulroney’s policy guru—and Wright’s boss—in the mid-1980s. “What a prime minister needs most is a surprise-free environment. And Nigel’s not the kind of guy who gets in a panic.”

Recruited as much for his business connections as his management skills, he now functions as a liaison with the country’s rich and powerful. In recent months, he’s met with the CEOs of Scotiabank, BCE, Quebecor, RIM, CN and Vale Canada. However, those ties have also been a source of controversy. In August it emerged he had twice been lobbied by Barrick Gold, a company controlled by the father of a former colleague and friend.

Still, Harper clearly has confidence in Wright’s abilities—earlier this year he raised eyebrows by dispatching his chief of staff, rather than International Trade Minister Ed Fast, to Washington to lobby to join trans-Pacific free trade zone talks. It worked.

The open question in Ottawa now is how long Wright will remain on the job. The two-year leave of absence he took from Onex, and his estimated $2-million salary, will expire at the new year. And with the next election in October 2015 already on the horizon, the Prime Minister will be looking for a long-term commitment.

06: Jenni ByrneThe link

One of the mysteries of power under Harper has been how he manages with so little continuity. He tends to churn through chiefs of staff, communications directors and other key aides faster than most prime ministers. But Jenni Byrne represents institutional memory and connectivity between separate components of Harper’s power structure. She’s the Conservative party’s director of operations, keeper of the campaign-strategy flame lit by her former boss and mentor, the now-ailing Sen. Doug Finley. But she also worked inside Harper’s PMO as director of issues management. Nobody else has done such senior jobs in both the party and the government. She is in effect the ultimate go-between, a pivot point for power. And she’s not just trusted by Harper and other upper-echelon players—her background as a teenaged Reform party activist lends her credibility with the party’s rank-and-file true believers.

07: Jason KenneyThe recruiter

Jason Kenney’s announcements are coming so thick and fast these days that it would be easy to let them blur together: blah blah Jason Kenney blah blah new rules blah. But then you’d miss the peculiar balance he’s struck during the past year as the Harper government’s most hyperkinetic minister.

Watch closely.

“These are the kind of bright young people we are trying to recruit,” Kenney said at the end of October, pointing to international university students standing photogenically behind him at a microphone outside the House of Commons. Up to 10,000 students will get landed immigrant status next year in the Canada Experience Class, a program that admitted only 2,500 in 2009.

A few weeks earlier, Kenney held another news conference to say he was revoking 3,100 fraudulently acquired Canadian citizenships. “We are taking action to strip citizenship and permanent residence status from people who don’t play by the rules and who lie or cheat to become a Canadian citizen.” From 1947 until last year, Canadian governments had only ever revoked 70 citizenships.

It’s a consciously two-track approach Kenney is taking as he makes what Stephen Harper has called “profound, and to this point, not fully appreciated changes to our immigration system.” Some days he rolls out the welcome mat. Other days he plays the enforcer.

“There is no anti-immigration constituency in Canada,” a government source said, explaining what the 44-year-old Calgary minister is up to. “We’re almost unique in the Western world in that there’s no voter support for anti-immigrant sentiment. But there’s a lot of concern about the integrity of the system.” So under Kenney, Canada welcomes as many immigrants each year as under the Liberals—but while it rejects or revokes only a tiny fraction of that number, the rate is far higher than under previous governments.

Kenney’s office is careful to alternate these “pro-immigration” and “pro-integrity” announcements so he never gets too far to one side of the balance he’s trying to strike.

It’s brought Kenney in for criticism, but he has never been shy about a fight. Meanwhile he’s become the Conservatives’ most effective recruiter among immigrant communities, a frequent guest at backbench MPs’ fundraisers, and a power broker whose support will be crucial to any candidate who hopes one day to succeed Harper.

08: Laureen HarperThe secret weapon

Stephen Harper recently joked that his wife has more modest tastes than Mumtaz Mahal, for whom Emperor Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal. Laureen smiled at reporters during their trade trip to India and added, “I’m not waiting until I’m dead.” The exchange showed a rare glimpse of the softer side of Stephen Harper, and the casual banter highlighted how Laureen Harper is increasingly the Prime Minister’s secret weapon.

Mr. Harper, an economist, is judged by critics as stiff and arrogant, while his wife, a former farm girl from Alberta who rides motorcycles, hikes mountains and used to compete at barrel racing, is seen as more fun-loving and down-to-earth. She uses that social power to their advantage. She has opened up 24 Sussex to a range of authors, artists and causes—including Ezra Levant on oil, Merna Forster on Canadian heroines and Nazanin Afshin-Jam on Iran. She brought in Heather Reisman and human rights activists to highlight a campaign on stoning.

Mrs. Harper grew up in a political family and met her husband through the Reform party. She is credited for one of the most deft image makeovers: a loyal patron of the arts, she orchestrated her husband’s appearance with Yo-Yo Ma at the National Arts Centre—he surprised the audience by playing the piano and singing With a Little Help From My Friends. It followed Mr. Harper’s cuts to arts funding and criticism from rich artists who gather at galas, like the ones his wife attends.

“When I was active, she used to discuss politics with Stephen frequently,” says Tom Flanagan, a former adviser to Mr. Harper. “But she never sat in on campaign staff meetings. Her influence was always more in the background. She has always had an understanding with Stephen that she wouldn’t talk about policy in public. This isn’t the United States, where the president’s wife can be a semi-independent political figure and take on political causes of her own.”

That may be changing. Last month, Mrs. Harper gave a speech in the Edmonton-Strathcona riding, where the NDP holds the seat. The event, part of a bid to elect a Conservative MP in 2015, was promoted as her “first-ever major public address to a Conservative partisan event in Alberta,” and a call to “restore our true-blue Conservative colours to the entire federal political map of Alberta.”

09: Raoul GebertThe mobilizer

Back in the early weeks of the NDP leadership race in the fall of 2011, Thomas Mulcair’s campaign seemed hopelessly outgunned by rival Brian Topp’s machine. Then something happened, although at the time few beyond Mulcair’s inner circle knew exactly what. He had recruited Raoul Gebert to manage his bid, and soon began to overtake Topp. After he won the leadership, Mulcair asked Gebert to be his chief of staff. The German-born, Montreal-based organizer was reluctant, but Mulcair refused to take no for an answer. No wonder. Gebert is a seasoned Quebec organizer, and the NDP’s first priority under Mulcair has to be securing its 2011 election breakthrough in the province. His somewhat detached attitude toward Parliament Hill seems to be a tactical advantage. Less caught up in question period and scrums than most, he’s shown more interest in making sure Mulcair travels outside the capital. As well, Gebert is as interested in campaign readiness for 2015 as he is in the daily Parliament Hill buzz. It’s perspective as power.

10: Ray NovakThe gatekeeper

Rarely has a prime minister shown so little interest in surrounding himself with people he’s grown to trust. None of the political aides and advisers thought to be close to Harper from before he won power in 2006 remains in his PMO—except for Ray Novak.

Starting out as Harper’s executive assistant in opposition way back in 2001, Novak basically carried the boss’s bags. Now, he carries some of the government’s most weighty responsibilities and delicate duties. As Harper’s principal secretary, he is, among other things, the key point of contact for foreign governments and provincial premiers. As well, Novak is the guy Harper trusts most to advise him on where he should travel and when.

He is rivalled inside the PMO only by Nigel Wright. While the chief of staff might have more to do with managing the day-to-day affairs of government, the principal secretary manages the moment-to-moment movements of the PM. And there’s history to consider. How to assess the fact that Novak once lived, when Harper was Opposition leader, above the garage at Stornoway? In a regime where personal attachments rarely add up to power, Novak is the standout exception.

11: John BairdThe aggravator

Leaving Canada’s foreign affairs minister off any list of the federal government’s most powerful figures would have been unthinkable under most prime ministers. Not so during the Stephen Harper era. Past foreign affairs ministers, like Maxime Bernier and Lawrence Cannon, didn’t register. John Baird is different. He came to the post in 2011 having already proven himself as an effective partisan slinger during Harper’s minority governments, and as a can-do transport minister. Since taking over at Foreign Affairs, he’s had measurable impact, forging personal bonds with key players abroad. In keeping with Harper’s shift to closer ties with Beijing, he’s viewed as close to his Chinese counterpart. But the edge Baird is known for in the House doesn’t disappear when he travels outside Canada. He scolded the UN recently for being too caught up in its own internal politics. Not everyone likes his style, but Baird has ended a string of foreign ministers who seemed unable to put their stamp on the job. Power can come from refusing to be ignored.

12: Pierre PoilievreThe brat

No backbench MP gets more face time on national television than Pierre Poilievre. At 32, he’s one of the youngest Conservative MPs. The former Stockwell Day staffer is a firebrand economic conservative who often gets sent to cover for ministers in trouble in question period. That he has the Prime Minister’s trust is shown by how unusually free he is to speak. So we decided to let him speak for himself here.

Q: What is political power in Ottawa today?

A: The ability to get things done.

Q: There’s a school of thought that the only person who has that is Stephen Harper.

A: He shares it with people who are working in the country’s best interest. I’ll give you an example. When I met a soldier in my riding who told me his parental benefits under EI had expired during the time he was serving in Afghanistan—and that he couldn’t extend them, even though prisoners can extend their benefits until they get out of jail—I took up the cause. It wasn’t on anybody’s radar in the Prime Minister’s Office or anywhere else. But by being diligent and hammering away at the political and public service decision-makers, we ultimately got a bill that fixed the problem.

Q: What role does question period play in all of this? That’s where most politically interested Canadians see you at work.

A: It’s the most reported-on portion of the parliamentary proceedings. It sets the agenda for public debate. But I think it gets an inordinate amount of attention. There are a lot more substantive decisions on legislation when it’s on clause-by-clause [review] before committee than there are in the daily question period battle.

Q: After the 2011 election, a lot of commentators said, “Holy cow, this Conservative government can do whatever it wants.” Are you feeling omnipotent these days?

A: Absolutely not. Majority government gives you a chance to fully implement ideas, but you still have to defend their consequences. The main difference is that under a minority, if an idea was momentarily unpopular, it couldn’t be implemented because the government could be defeated before the merits of the idea could be understood. Under a majority government, there’s time for an idea to be absorbed. A perfect example is the increase in Old Age Security eligibility. That was a terrific decision. Because it’s not a populist one, it takes time for the wisdom of the idea to be explained.

Q: In QP, you and Alex Boulerice of the NDP often go after each other hammer and tongs. Do you guys ever go for a beer?

A: We haven’t done that, but we do talk in the halls, and I actually kind of like the guy. I just fundamentally disagree with him.

Q: In a lot of circles your image is as the incorrigible brat of the Conservative caucus—cursing at committee meetings, delivering talking points. Were you surprised to develop that kind of reputation?

A: I honestly don’t mind it. I believe everything I say. The so-called talking points I use are most often things I write for myself. I believe in the government I defend, and when I stand up to defend a minister who’s under attack, I believe in the message. People focus on question period, but I dedicate more of my time to policy development. I was the caucus lead on the platform at the last election. But listen, when it comes time to handle the tough political files, I’m happy to do that too.

13: D’arcy LevesqueThe influencer

Is it possible the lobbyist with the most impact in Ottawa actually lives in Calgary? Of course—this is the Harper era. A strong case can be made for D’Arcy Levesque, vice-president of public and government affairs for Enbridge Inc., the company whose proposed Gateway pipeline—which would take oil sands crude across B.C. to be shipped by tanker to Asia—has so powerfully preoccupied the Harper government. Although he’s an energy industry veteran—he helped secure government support that pumped millions into the oil sands—he’s also wise to the ways of politics, as a former adviser to Tory ministers in Alberta’s provincial government. Along with spearheading Enbridge’s clearly close relationship with Harper’s government, Levesque is noted for his courting of elite sympathy through arts philanthropy; he’s the strategist behind his company’s high-profile sponsorship of events at the National Arts Centre, including the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards, a function much beloved by Laureen Harper. His devotion to the arts, though, is not entirely tactical: Levesque’s mother, who died last summer, was Edmonton landscape painter Isabel Levesque.

14: Jim FlahertyThe steady hand

Only three years ago, he appeared fated to go down as a failed finance minister. Having held the most powerful post in cabinet since Harper formed his first government in 2006, Jim Flaherty is the longest-serving minister (tied with Senate leader Marjory LeBreton). But the financial market meltdown that hit with full force just after the 2008 election, and the recession that followed, threatened to reduce him to a political casualty of an economic catastrophe. After all, he’d promised no deficits—then delivered a gusher of red ink. Yet Flaherty not only survived, he thrived. The massive taxpayer-funded ad campaign that accompanied “Canada’s Economic Action Plan,” and continues to this day, salvaged the government’s popular reputation for reasonable economic management and, by extension, Flaherty’s own credibility as Harper’s point man on the file. These might be trying times, the narrative goes, but Canada has outperformed comparable countries. Flaherty’s Irish smile has weathered into a perpetual look of strain, but he’s remained the Tory face of economic resilience. And he’s settled in for the long haul as the closest thing to an indispensable minister in Harper’s cabinet.

15: Charlie AngusThe antagonist

If there is an art to being an opposition member of parliament, it’s to be found at the intersection of policy wonkery and partisan acrimony. Charlie Angus lives at that crossroads. He delves deep into files like Aboriginal affairs and election spending rules, but sees everything he learns through an NDP-orange lens. He’s also a former rock musician who knows how to perform before a big audience.

The biggest of each day the House is sitting comes during question period. Angus has turned himself into a master of QP timing and delivery. He personally pushed the lousy-housing plight of Attawapiskat, a reserve community in his northern Ontario riding, onto the front pages. More than any other opposition MP, he took media revelations about dubious Conservative robocalling tactics during last year’s federal election and converted the story into many days of QP drama.

For any ordinary MP to succeed in putting himself at the centre of debate on so many days would matter. Provoking the government into taking action, as Angus can boast to have done on multiple occasions, matters even more.

16: Diane FinleyThe reformer

Even her fans don’t claim that the minister of human resources and skill development is a natural charmer. But in the run-up to last year’s federal budget, government sources say, no other minister was so prominent at cabinet meetings. After all, Finley’s sprawling department runs both Employment Insurance and Old Age Security. Harper had targeted both programs for significant, controversial reforms. It’s doubtful he would have tried with a less trusted minister in charge. Finley has come under intense fire from critics on both files, but remains unflappable. Her reputation among insiders is mixed. Tories praise her. Bureaucrats and lobbyists, not so much. She’s married to Sen. Doug Finley, the architect of Harper’s election strategy before he was largely sidelined by illness. But Diane Finley is a force to be reckoned with in her own right, the key voice on the government’s most contentious domestic policy files.

17: Wayne WoutersThe mandarin-in-chief

Maybe it’s fanciful to imagine it matters much that the clerk of the Privy Council, the top federal public servant, was born in tiny Edam, Sask. But in a government that prides itself in thinking outside the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal triangle, and in which Prairie roots confirm bragging rights, it can’t hurt. Appointed mandarin of mandarins in July 2009, Wayne Wouters started running the show when that year’s stimulus spending was rolling out. It was a hectic, anxiety-ridden period for the Harper government. An economist by training, unflamboyant in the classic career public servant mode, he has few detractors. So far. But as the government proceeds with paring public sector jobs across many departments, his reputation will be tested. He’s made a point of cheerleading for the “collective accomplishments” of the public service. There are rumours that he might soon retire, but for now, he remains solidly in place and stolidly powerful.

18: Yaprak Baltac?ogluThe action planner

The toughest test Stephen Harper’s government has so far faced arguably came in the weeks immediately after Finance Minister Jim Flaherty tabled his 2009 budget. Rushed out that January as a global recession took hold, the emergency spending plan earmarked $4 billion for local and regional infrastructure projects and plunged Ottawa back into deficit. The task of shovelling that money out the door fast enough to dull the edge of the economic downturn fell to John Baird, then minister of transportation and infrastructure. But to manage the unprecedented spending spree, he would turn to Yaprak Baltacioglu, his deputy minister and already a rising figure in the federal bureaucracy.

Success in fast-tracking billions in infrastructure spending without major scandal or charges of serious mismanagement boosted both minister and deputy. Baird is, of course, now Harper’s foreign minister. Baltacioglu, as befits a mandarin, keeps a lower profile. Still, among Ottawa insiders her name resonates, even if few can pronounce it. (For the record, it’s YAP-rak Bal-ti-CHOO-lu.) She has a reputation for public discretion but behind-closed-doors bluntness. “What has made her a success is that she’s a straight-shooter. She doesn’t sugar-coat,” says Goldy Hyder, a well-connected Tory with the lobbying and consulting firm Hill and Knowlton.

Baltacioglu was born in Turkey and came to Canada when she was in her early 20s, about 30 years ago (the Treasury Board’s media office would not release her age or say what year she immigrated). She arrived with a law degree from Istanbul University and added a master’s in public administration from Carleton before joining the public service in 1989. She rose through posts in agriculture, environment and the Privy Council Office, the bureaucratic nerve centre that supports the Prime Minister’s Office. A few years ago she married Robert Fonberg, now deputy minister of defence. He’s Jewish, she’s Muslim. But as a public-service power couple, they stand out more for their combined clout than their personal profiles.

Harper’s senior strategists have been singing Baltacioglu’s praises ever since she implemented the 2009 stimulus program. When a shake-up of top mandarins was announced in early October, Harper appointed her secretary to the Treasury Board, making her the top bureaucrat at the central agency in charge of the government-wide cost-cutting exercise overseen by Tony Clement, the treasury board president. One Conservative strategist said she is not expected to argue for any strong set of ideas about what parts of government should be trimmed or protected. “I don’t think she has a deeply held agenda,” the strategist said. “She’s something of an opportunist who seizes the moment.” And, not for the first time in the Harper era, Baltacioglu’s moment seems to be now.

19: David RutherfordThe conduit

It’s not unusual for a prime minister, especially after a few years in power, to develop a strained relationship with the media. But Harper’s Conservatives are unique in having been encouraged from the outset—by Doug Finley among others—to regard the mainstream media as their natural, eternal enemy. The upshot is that finding national media figures with truly close relationships to political power in Harper’s Ottawa is uncommonly difficult. But there is an exception. When Harper needs to put the message out to the right-wing faithful, he can count on populist radio legend Dave Rutherford. It’s in Rutherford’s Calgary QR77 studio that Harper regularly finds a comfortable forum for sending a relaxed message to his core supporters. Yet Rutherford doesn’t indulge in empty-headed boosterism. When Harper dropped by to talk last summer, Rutherford raised the issues of the European economy, worrying personal debt levels in Canada and public service cuts. Not an inquisition, but surprisingly substantial for talk radio. For Harper, the value is clear: he gets to convey seriousness without being grilled. For Rutherford, there’s the power of serving as the link between the PM and many of his more reliable backers in his hometown market.

20: Irving GersteinThe fundraiser

The numbers are stark. Since 2005, the Conservative Party of Canada has raised close to $145 million in public donations at the national level. Over the same time, the Liberals managed less than half that sum. The NDP, just $40 million. It is a testament to the Conservative party’s support, but also its biggest advantage in this era of the permanent campaign. And for as long as there has been a Conservative Party of Canada, the chair of the Conservative Fund has been Irving Gerstein.

The party’s fundraising success is not built on the depth of donors’ pockets, Gerstein told the Conservative party convention in 2011, but on the breadth of its donor base. “To raise money successfully, a political party must appeal to a large number of Canadians of ordinary means,” he said. “That is still what some parties do not understand, and that is why some parties are lagging behind.”

The party’s haul is a triumph of messaging, but also technology. One insider notes the computerized lists of contributors Gerstein has overseen are at the core of the party’s system for tapping volunteers and votes. Gerstein credits the party’s database for the election of 40 Conservative MPs during the last election.

The former president of Peoples Jewellers (his grandfather founded the company) Gerstein previously chaired the Progressive Conservative party’s fund. Stephen Harper nominated him for the Senate in 2008. As part of the in-and-out scandal, Gerstein was one of four Conservative party officials charged under the Elections Act. (The charges were dropped when the Conservative party agreed to pay a $52,000 fine.) Ian Brodie, a former chief of staff to the Prime Minister, lauds Gerstein as “the single best political fundraiser any party in Canada has ever had,” one who has seen various changes to fundraising laws and methods over the years. “What’s his secret? There is no secret. He works hard every single day and never lets go of an opportunity to ask,” Brodie says. “Some call him shameless. I call him persistent. I literally don’t know what Mr. Harper would do without him.”

21: Kevin PageThe badger

When Harper appointed the first-ever parliamentary budget officer—a new watchdog over federal spending and economic forecasting—the Prime Minister got far more than he bargained for. On paper, Kevin Page looked like a modestly successful bureaucrat, the sort unlikely to make waves.

As it turned out, Page has been a persistent, productively troublesome critic. (The accidental death of a son several years ago seemed to instill in him a determination to make a difference.) He’s questioned the government’s deficit numbers—and been proven largely right. He’s projected F-35 jet costs as far higher than the government claimed—and been backed up later by the auditor general. Through it all, his blue-collar, Thunder Bay, Ont.-bred ethos proved stubbornly impervious to Conservative ministers’ attempts to intimidate him into docility.

Although his five-year term as PBO wraps up at the end of this year, Page isn’t exiting quietly. He’s demanding details of budget cuts from dozens of government departments and agencies. Treasury Board President Tony Clement, Harper’s point man for the cuts, has slammed the budget officer for exceeding his mandate.

To the end of his term, Page is the embodiment of the power of independence under unrelenting pressure.

22: Justin TrudeauThe social leader

Justin Trudeau has two voices. There’s the rather old-fashioned one that moved so many Canadians when he delivered the eulogy at the funeral of his famous father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, in 2000. He reverts to that sort of grand oratory on big occasions, like when he launched his bid for the Liberal leadership back on Oct. 2. But there’s also the far less formal voice that his nearly 170,000 Twitter followers know so well through his frequent tweets on subjects ranging from where he’s headed for breakfast to what he thinks of the latest Conservative policy move.

No other Canadian politician approaches Trudeau’s mastery of social media. His massive following, and knack for the abbreviated form that holds their attention, is his sole indisputable accomplishment so far in public life. After all, he didn’t lead any organization before jumping into federal politics in 2008, and hasn’t landed a major critic’s role in the Liberal opposition caucus. It’s his social-media stardom that underpins his front-running bid for his party’s leadership.

Trudeau holds that the degree to which his party’s most dedicated young activists live their partisan lives in the digital arena is a direct reflection of their discontent with old-style politics. “I think of the rise of social media,” he told Maclean’s, “not as a root cause, but as a symptom.”

There’s no disputing the power Trudeau has tapped into. Still, experts who follow the politics of social media point to drawbacks and pitfalls. Brian Klunder, a Liberal official and public affairs consultant with Fleishman-Hillard, says Trudeau’s casual tweets established a valuable rapport with his followers over the past few years. But now the stakes are higher, the scrutiny more intense. And will voters be more inclined to see Trudeau as a lightweight because of his close identification with the Twitter throng?

These questions, however valid, don’t change the fact that any of Trudeau’s Liberal rivals, and Conservative and NDP adversaries, would pay dearly to duplicate his social-media success. There’s undeniable power in that instant access to an attentive online community. The political story of 2013 might well be the rise of Canada’s first social media-propelled pol to a federal party’s leadership.

23: Alex HimelfarbThe unofficial critic

As a bureaucrat, Alex Himelfarb spent half a lifetime faithfully executing politicians’ orders, a trajectory that peaked when he served as clerk of the Privy Council to Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin and, briefly, Stephen Harper.

Then came the surprise. Since he returned in 2008 from a stint as Canada’s ambassador to Rome, Himelfarb has become a leading public critic of Harper-style government, a blogging theorist of effective centre-left opposition.

His Alex’s Blog never mentions Harper by name, but it’s easy to tell he’s not a fan. A succession of Liberal leaders have kept Himelfarb on speed dial, but he enjoys not having a political boss anymore, and it’s the NDP that has most effectively borrowed his emphasis on income inequality as a winning issue for the left.

The government has other critics in the “greying establishment veteran” demographic —finance department retirees Scott Clark and Pete deVries, former Bank of Canada governor David Dodge—but it’s Himelfarb’s persistence and focus that make him a standard-bearer for Ottawa denizens who dream of a post-Harper Canada.

24: Stephen WoodworthThe rebel

For a few weeks this fall Stephen Woodworth was something of a maverick. With Motion 312, he called on Parliament to take up the question of when life begins, launching a discussion about abortion the Prime Minister has repeatedly expressed an unwillingness to engage. The debate thrust Woodworth into the spotlight: an illuminated place in which government backbenchers rarely find themselves. What’s more, the resulting vote, which saw his motion shot down, nevertheless exposed a split in cabinet. Ten members of cabinet supported him, most notably Jason Kenney and Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose, who also has responsibility for the status of women file. But Woodworth’s motion is just the most obvious in what have been several signs of life from the cheap seats on the government side. Though Tory David Wilks’s opposition to the year’s first omnibus budget bill was short-lived—and embarrassingly withdrawn—there have been other examples of a restive backbench. Mark Warawa followed Woodworth’s motion with a motion opposing sex-selective abortion. James Bezan recently acknowledged his opposition to the proposed takeover of Calgary’s Nexen by Chinese state-owned oil company CNOOC. And Brad Trost has mused vaguely of a proposal that would empower MPs. Yes, a healthy balance between party loyalty and MP independence is still a ways off. But the backbench can’t be ignored these days. Especially not with Woodworth emerging as the standard-bearer for the party’s largely quiet social conservatives.

25: Miriam ZivThe dogged envoy

Relations between Canada and Israel have rarely been as warm as they have become during Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s time in office. Canada consistently sides with Israel at the United Nations, and earlier this fall ended diplomatic relations with Israel’s arch-enemy, Iran. Israel, says Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, “has no greater friend than Canada.”

Israel’s representative in Canada during much of this period has been long-time diplomat Miriam Ziv—though she downplays the role she’s had influencing Ottawa’s policy.

“There’s no doubt that I have ongoing and very good relationships with the ministers in the government. I can engage with them, talk with them, raise issues, and see how things can be done. And I find the doors open,” she says, noting that she has a particularly good relationship with John Baird but rarely talks to Stephen Harper. “But I must say the friendship is not dependent on a personality. I cannot attribute it all to myself. But I definitely hope that I have added onto this very special relationship that is based on shared values, on really understanding the fact that we are a democracy in a hostile, non-democratic region.”

Prior to her posting in Ottawa, Ziv served as assistant deputy minister for strategic affairs in Israel’s foreign ministry, where she focused on Iran and its perceived nuclear threat. This was a priority issue for her when she arrived and remains so—but in recent days it has been supplanted by the escalating violence between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

When not dealing with security threats, Ziv works to increase trade and other ties between Canada and Israel. It’s not an easy job, she says. She tries to convince to convince academic and business leaders to visit and see what opportunities may exist. “I’m out all the time. I’m in many ways tireless,” she says. “This is what my bodyguards tell me.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/25-most-important-people-in-ottawa/feed/12The five events that matter most to Ottawa’s power brokershttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/scene-and-be-seen/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/scene-and-be-seen/#commentsTue, 27 Nov 2012 10:00:01 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=317432Scene and be seen around Parliament

Laureen Harper chairs this arts/corporate/political elite event, which raises funds for young artists. Sarah McLachlan and Chinese pianist Lang Lang have performed, as has Laureen’s other half, on piano.

Minister Moore’s Movie Night

Held in various museums, galleries and at the NAC, MPs line up to have their photos taken with the stars at Heritage Minister James Moore’s movie and music nights, highlighting the best in Canadian culture.

Held in a 262-seat theatre, this fundraiser to help young cancer patients learn about fertility options has become one of Ottawa’s hottest intimate tickets. Rick Mercer hosts; Jann Arden’s performed twice.

]]>Ever wonder where Ottawa’s most powerful people toil away? Ever been curious about where the country’s top politicians, lobbyists, watchdogs, judges, journalists, bankers, bureaucrats, diplomats, cops and spies spend their days? Behold: our map of the 100 most powerful buildings in the nation’s capital.

BLUE: Political offices

RED: Federal departments

PURPLE: Appointed power

YELLOW: Newsrooms

TURQUOISE: Lobbyist offices

MAGENTA: Embassies

GREEN: Gatherings

BLACK: Cops and spies

DOTS: Power eateries

ORANGE: Mixed tenants

A bird’s eye view of the city’s downtown core demonstrates some pretty clear patterns. Most political power, not surprisingly, emanates from Parliament Hill. Most newsrooms congregate within a couple of blocks of the Hill. Most government watchdogs lie west of Bank Street. Federal departments surround the city’s core, and dominate downtown Gatineau across the river, too. Queen Street, right in the middle of the action, stands out for its variety of powerful tenants. Beyond the core, law enforcement and security organizations enjoy larger campuses. And in Rockcliffe Park, some of Canada’s most powerful politicians maintain residences.

Photos by Nick Taylor-Vaisey, with some exceptions. Photos of the Sir Leonard Tilley Building, Canadian Security Intelligence Service Headquarters and Royal Canadian Mounted Police Headquarters courtesy Google Street View.